


Your name seared into my skin

by galaxylove



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Angst??, F/F, Soulmates, Tattoos, canon verse w/ a twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-01-30 22:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12662304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxylove/pseuds/galaxylove
Summary: “I don’t know, I guess. I just like to live for now, and decide what I can do and where to go and who to see and,“ Sana paused, uncertainty lacing her tone. “My future doesn’t really have that.”Momo swallowed the ball of emotion that had begun to rise in her throat.“You mean like soul mates?” Momo didn’t know how she kept her voice stable when it felt like everything was about to break apart.“Yeah.” Sana said. “Like soul mates.”





	1. Chapter 1

   When Momo turns twenty, her ribcage burns. The pain is nothing like the movies described it - there was nothing romantic about the searing tendrils of fire carving a name into her side, bringing her to her knees. She runs to the bathroom, rivulets of sweat pouring down her face as she waits for the bath to fill, before submerging herself fully into ice cold water. She doesn’t get to see the process of her soul mates name slowly etching itself into her skin, for at some point she blacks out from the pain.

  She wakes up an hour later to see Mina standing in the doorway with a hand over her mouth, eyes glistening with what could have been worry, or fear. She’s pulled from the freezing tub, frantically rubbed down with a towel and bundled in as many blankets as Mina could find. She doesn’t miss the way that Mina’s eyes earnestly avoid looking at the fresh black marks on her side, and when she stands in front of the mirror to see her familiar, bubbly lettering in her native tongue branded on her skin, she understands why Mina didn’t say a word.

  When the other girls ask, Mina tells them that Momo has come down with a temperature and isn’t to be disturbed at all, effectively banishing all of them (including Jeongyeon) from Momo and Jeongyeon’s shared room. The sound of concerned voices from the hallway drowns out as the night stretches on, and Momo spends her twentieth birthday tracing the strokes on her side with trembling fingers, wondering how she’s going to tell her best friend that the fates had marked her down as her _soulmate._

 

* * *

 

  

   She doesn’t, in the end. She decides that she’ll wait until Sana’s own mark appears, an inner voice telling her that she should be absolutely certain they are marked as each others. Sana will turn twenty in a little over two months anyway, and Momo was in no rush to force the course of the rest of her life right now. So she waited. She performed, and she smiled, and she sat on creaky old park swings at 3am with the love of her life, swinging higher and higher until “ _I can almost touch the stars Momo_ !” and her ribcage burned at the proximity - and she almost confessed, right there under the stars with Sana’s smile making her heart do frantic somersaults in her chest, and the mark on her side urging her to reach out and say _something_ . But she smiled and held her tongue, marvelling at the way Sana’s laughter produced crisp white clouds of breath on an early November morning where the sun had yet to rise and they had to be awake for a schedule in little under three hours. She bookmarked the way that Sana’s smile made her feel, tucking it away with all of the other little bits of information marked as ‘love’ in her chest, and the way Sana’s hand felt in her own when they snuck back into the dorm at 5am - only to be caught out by a scowling Park Jihyo who scolded them in harsh whispers and quick pinches to their cold skin, exasperated curses following them as they tiptoed towards their bedrooms. She relished the ache in her side when Sana tugged on her hand, pulling her into _her_ room and _her_ bed until they were tumbling over each other and unmade sheets, giggling softly until someone (Nayeon, she thinks) groggily launches one of Mina’s stuffed toys at their heads with a mumbled “ _shut the fuck up_ ”. She falls asleep in Sana’s arms, if only for an hour or two, and for the first time in two weeks she feels like everything is going to be alright.

 

  She ignores the concerned glances Mina throws her way, fixating herself on the way Sana’s eyes softened when they landed on her.

  If she looked a little harder, she might have noticed how they softened when she looked at Mina too. And Tzuyu, and Jihyo, and-

 

  Decembers comes around and it’s arguably their busiest time of the year, hectic schedules and last minute choreo change ups and Momo found herself thrown into a number of collaboration stages.

  She almost finds herself forgetting about her soul mark. That is, if she didn’t have to wake up early every morning to apply concealer, knowing that the stylists would shove her into whatever stomach-baring crop top they could find. She had panicked the first time she had changed into an outfit she had been given, looking into the mirror and seeing the way that the first letter of her tattoo peeked out from the barely there shirt. She felt slender hands pulling her away from the others, pulling her shirt up slightly when nobody else could see them and applying concealer in hurried but careful strokes. Gratitude poured out of her mouth in waves and Mina stayed silent, giving Momo a warm smile in return and a quick tap on her waist to say that she was done, tugging the hem of Momo’s shirt down a little further than before. Mina said nothing as they returned to seven other girls, and perhaps Momo’s first mistake was not noting how deafening the silence was.

 

* * *

 

 

  Sana turns twenty and Momo is ecstatic, waiting the entire day to have a piece of Sana to herself and talk to her and maybe finally confess to her that she had been branded as hers by some unknown deity. She stares at the soul mark peeking out from Jeongyeon’s sleeve, elegant cursive lettering that stretched down her arm, drawing attention to the hand that was always loosely linked with another. Nayeon’s fingers shifted, showing a brief glimpse of the tiny, neat letters tattooed on the inside of her pinky, before curling tightly around Jeongyeon’s, a silent promise of love and affection and everything Momo yearned for. It’s rare for them to have their marks on display, so often covered up by heavy make-up and hidden expertly from the cameras that seemed constant in their lives. Momo hoped that Sana’s would be somewhere hidden too, hand subconsciously reaching up to stroke her own side.

  The burning in her ribs had subsided to a slow smoulder as of late, glowing embers flickering inconsistently between her ribs, and she wished that the feeling stayed like this for a while because the warmth was familiar and comforting and reminded her of home. She caught a hold of eyes dripping with kerosene and the fire in her chest roared.

  She waited until the party began to wind down and her members trickled out to their beds in slow waves, watching Jeongyeon and Nayeon giggle as they stumbled down the hallway still hand in hand, taking note that she probably definitely shouldn’t go back to her own room for a while if she knew what was good for her. She watched Mina drag Jihyo away to their room, telling her that the dishes and the cleanup could wait til the morning and she should get some rest and really Momo was _so_ thankful for everything that Mina had done for her til this point, thanking her with her eyes when she gave her a supportive nod from across the room. The three younger ones had retired to their rooms earlier in the night, citing homework and sleep as excuses, and so that left Momo and Sana on the couch together with the remnants of the chocolatiest birthday cake they could find. As soon as the door closed behind Mina and Jihyo, Momo felt a hand on her thigh and looked up into glittering eyes.

  “Hey, do you wanna go to the park?”

 

* * *

 

 

   Momo found herself drunk on emotions (and perhaps a little bit of soju) in the same park with Sana at 2am, sat on the same creaky old swings as their shoes scuffed the gravel beneath their feet and their heads tilted up to wonder at the stars. The air had grown colder since the last time they came but the alcohol in their bodies kept them warm as they laughed and played like little kids, scrambling over climbing frames and whining at the biting cold of the metal under their hands. They fall into each other, all clumsy feet and inebriated smiles, before crashing to the ground. Even in her intoxicated state, Momo made sure to place herself beneath Sana, taking the brunt of the impact as soft bodies hit hard ground. They lay there for a while, giggling at their misfortune and burrowing themselves deeper into each other's arms and just existed for a while.

  “I wish we could stay like this.”

  Momo hummed in agreement, cold-numbed fingers stroking Sana’s hair as she lay on her chest, ignoring how the tattoo on her ribs burned in vicious triumph when Sana snuggled closer into her.

  “It’s nice. Just being here, and not really thinking.” Momo replied softly, feeling Sana nod lazily against her. “Like you can forget about everything.” Sana moved further up, pressing her cold nose to the exposed skin of Momo’s neck, warm breath contrasting as Momo felt her eyelashes flutter against her with every blink. She daren’t move for fear of disrupting the moment, in fear of losing how _right_ this felt.

  “That’d be nice.” Sana’s voice was smaller than she could ever remember, _Sana_ was smaller than she could ever remember, curling herself further and further into Momo like she could disappear if she tried hard enough. “I don’t like to think about the future.”

  “Why not?” Momo asked. The ache in her side began to grow.

  “I don’t know, I guess. I just like to live for now, and decide what I can do and where to go and who to see and,“ Sana paused, uncertainty lacing her tone. “My future doesn’t really have that.”

  Momo swallowed the ball of emotion that had begun to rise in her throat.

  “You mean like soul mates?” Momo didn’t know how she kept her voice stable when it felt like everything was about to break apart.

  “Yeah.” Sana said. “Like soul mates.”

  Momo couldn’t reply, not when scorching flames were rapidly setting her insides alight. She ignored them.

  “So you don’t believe in soul mates?”

  Sana smiled.

  “Not at all.”

 

* * *

 

  Jihyo jolts awake at 5am. There are faint noises outside her door, so she throws back the sheets and slips out of bed with as much care as she could muster so as not to disturb the three other girls in the room, and ventures down the hallway on practiced tip toes. The sounds grow louder, and she realises that it’s broken sobbing coming from the bathroom, and the doors open as she peeks in and -

  The shower is running, and Momo is crumpled at the bottom of the stall fully clothed, drenched from the relentless, freezing water falling around her. Her shirts hiked up and she’s scrubbing desperately at her side, rubbed raw from the force of her actions and _oh._

  Jihyo sees it, the bubbly kanji tattooed on Momo’s ribs, glaring stubbornly at them both on angry, irritated skin. She knows enough of the language to read the achingly familiar name, and Momo hasn’t taken notice of her yet as her cries grow increasingly desolate, the frantic scratching at her side ceasing as her hands shakingly move to cover her face. She collapses further into herself, breathing ragged as she fought back the sobs choking in her throat.

  Jihyo doesn’t stop to think before she throws herself under ice cold water, arms wrapping tightly around the shuddering body beneath her in an attempt to alleviate some of the pain.

  She knows it doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

  The ache in her side for the next few days was nothing compared to the ache in her chest when melodious laughter trickled from the other side of the room, or the shame in her stomach when she looked up and saw two pairs of eyes riddled with concern staring back at her. She lost herself in practice, hoping that the pounding heartbeat and rushing blood in her ears could drown out the roar of the flames.

 

* * *

 

 

  It takes a while for Momo to adjust, to accept that Sana probably wasn’t her soulmate given the lack of her name tattooed on her body, and that Momo was one of the unlucky ones. One of the people whose soulmate wasn’t their own, and that she’d have to live with seeing _her_ soulmate find happiness with someone else, if she even wanted to. Momo was a romantic, growing up on cheesy films and reading all the books and witnessing the beautiful, glowing bond her parents shared. So she fully expected to find her soulmate, and fall in love, and that would be that. She knew that some people refuted fate, ignoring destiny and choosing their own path in love. She hadn’t expected Sana to be one of those people, and she wondered if the charred chasm inside of her would ever close.

  The despairing embers in her chest that sparked up every time she called her name made her think maybe not.

  She tries not to think about it every morning when she stands in front of the mirror, diligently rubbing concealer into her side through closed eyes. It was easy when she knew the precise strokes and shapes, fingers having traced handwriting that wasn’t her own enough times as she tried to sleep despite the sea of flames devouring her whole. If Jeongyeon noticed the dried tear tracks on her face every morning, she didn’t say a word.

  She pulls her shirt back down and smooths out the creases, as if there was nothing underneath. She exhales heavily, wearing a practiced expression on her face as she steps out of the bathroom in front of eight sets of eyes, grinning easily as she sits down at the table and ignores the coiling flames in the pit of her stomach when she sees the way Nayeon looks at Jeongyeon. She’s getting better at not feeding the fire, despite throwing herself on the pyre long ago. Her eyes meet Mina’s across the table, and then Jihyo’s, and she smiles a knowing, sad smile, not sure if she was reassuring them or herself. She laughs at a joke Dahyun said, barely flinching at the tinkling laughter two seats away as it wrapped around her ribcage suffocatingly.

 

* * *

 

 

 She knows that Jihyo and Mina talk about her. She had stumbled out of her room one night when the heat became too much to bare, only to see the two standing in the kitchen talking in hushed whispers over steaming mugs of hot chocolate. They didn’t notice her, barely audible as they shifted closer to each other, and Momo filed away this revelation in the space left in her chest. _Well this is new,_ Momo thought, noting the tender smile on Mina’s face as she listened to Jihyo’s soft words with rapt attention, and the way the fingers curled around Jihyo’s mug frequently stretched out to brush against Mina’s.

  Momo rapped on the doorframe to announce herself, shuffling into the kitchen to make herself a mug of hot chocolate before sitting at the table, not saying a word. Silent conversation stretched between Jihyo and Mina before they sat on either side of her, Jihyo’s arm wrapping around her waist as she rested her head on her shoulder, and Mina’s hand rubbing soothing patterns on her thigh. She took a sip of her drink and closed her eyes, a genuine grin stretching on her face as she drank in the the familiar scent of the two girls beside her, letting her head fall on top of Jihyo’s.

  “I’m okay.” She whispered into the mug, Mina’s hand still moving on her thigh reassuringly. And she would be, she thinks. She could feel the love emanating off of her friends in waves, and she realised that maybe there was more to life than the brand on her skin.

  “I’m gonna be okay.”

 

* * *

 

  Jihyo woke up early on their day off, eyes heavy with sleep as she stumbled to the bathroom at 6am, betrayed by her bladder as she absently makes a mental reminder to not drink so much before bed again. She bursts through the door, too distracted to pay attention to the light shining out from under the door and stops and stares at the unexpected body sat on the edge of the tub, head whipping up rapidly at the sudden entrance. It takes her a moment to take it all in, and then her eyes widen, all traces of sleep disappearing in an instance.

  Sana, perched on the rim of the bathtub with a tub of concealer in one hand and slowly fading black marks on her wrist. The lines were worn, as if they settled into her skin years before now, and Jihyo wonders how long she had been hiding this from them. Her Japanese wasn’t perfect, but she understood enough to recognise the childlike kanji scrawled on the inside of Sana’s wrist. Why wouldn’t she, when she had seen the exact handwriting right next to her own countless times before.

   **_平井 もも_ **


	2. The electricity arcing through my veins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Since when were you not afraid of thunder?”  
> Sana smiled against Momo’s hair. She learned not to be afraid of thunder when it echoed inside her chest at every interval between heartbeats, roaring louder every time she looked into sun-kissed brown eyes. It was harsh, cracking booms against her ribs when deft fingers played with her own, and it was soft, low rumbles in her stomach when the breaths skittering across her body evened out as the arm slung across her waist grew lax. She absently wondered when she had learned to live with the noise.  
> Another flash of lightning lit up the room but the body against her had already succumbed to sleep. The accompanying thunder was nothing compared to the rolling waves in her chest.  
> “When you became the lightning, I suppose.”

   Nobody knew for sure how the soul bond worked. Some thought it was triggered by touch, the first brush of your soulmates skin against your own. Some thought that it came with time, that once you had both reached a certain age their name would embed itself deeply into your skin and you would have to spend the rest of your life waiting for someone with that name to show you your name ingrained on their body too. Some thought it was certain words or when you said each others names, or perhaps it was entirely down to chance and the fates just liked to mess around with the billions of lives in their grasp.

   For Sana, it happened when she was fourteen and walking home from the mall with a Korean entertainment companies calling card tucked in her pocket, inviting her to audition for them in the next two weeks. She made herself giddy thinking about how she had the chance to be in the same company as some of her favourite idols, nimble fingers constantly flipping the card to re-read it and make sure she wasn’t dreaming when a sharp jolt shot up her wrist. The card fluttered to the floor, dropping it out of shock, and Sana hissed when spiking volts of electricity pulsed with more and more intensity as she stood there clutching her wrist with her other hand. Flashing heat seared through her veins as she stumbled the rest of her way home, crashing through her door and into her mother’s arms shaking violently at every aftershock that wracked her body. Her mother was saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear anything over the crashing roar of thunder in her ears, and she stared intently at her mother’s lips to decipher the words she said, that she kept repeating over and over with an oddly joyous look on her face. Was this how mothers were _supposed_ to react when their daughter’s came home in agonizing pain and not knowing what the hell was going on? She was shaking Sana’s wrist, holding it in front of her face and Sana had every mind to call her father and tell him he had married a crazy woman when she saw the first stroke of black finish etching itself into her skin.

   _Oh. Oh God._ Now she understood her mother's hysteria and why her wrist felt like it was about to short-circuit from the continuous surges of electricity pulsating directly into her heart, beating a frenzied, bruising rhythm against her ribs. She sank to the floor in stunned awe, eyes never leaving the black marks painstakingly writing itself into her skin as if her soulmate themselves were taking the utmost care to make it perfect. She didn’t feel her mother move her to the sofa at some point, nor did she notice her father coming home and her mother frantically explaining everything in exaggerated gestures and gleeful tones. She was completely and utterly transfixed by the magic spreading through her body in electric waves, and it was hours later when the night had drawn in and the only light in the room was a small lamp in the corner that cast soft, orange hues on the freshly printed letters on her skin. She read them again and again, testing how the name felt rolling off her tongue as she spoke them to the silent night.

   _Hirai Momo._

  She decided she liked how the name felt spilling from her lips.

* * *

   “ _Congratulations, you have passed through this stage of the auditions. We’d like to offer you the chance to train under JYP Entertainment._ ”

  The phone in Sana’s hand would have dropped to the floor if it hadn’t been for her mother’s quick reflexes, catching the device and continuing the conversation seamlessly. The next few moments were a flurry of excitable squealing and her mother batting her away from the phone with an equally excited smile on her face, juggling the important details being fed to her in one ear and her ecstatic daughter jumping around the kitchen. She wrote down the contact details before hanging up after a never-ending stream of thank yous, and turned to engulf Sana in a crushing hug that only a mother could do.

  “I told you that you could do it my little flower.” She squished Sana’s cheeks between her palms, pressing feather-light kisses all over her face. “You were one of only two applicants they accepted you know.”

  Sana thought of all the determined faces she had walked past in the audition hall, wondering which of them she had been lucky enough to be picked alongside. She had been overwhelmed by the talent in the room, various hopefuls displaying their skills in last minute run throughs of their routines and she was dazed at how she, out of all the people in that room, had been selected to become a star. She nuzzled into her mother's embrace, memorizing the scent of home and thinking how everything was only just about to begin.

* * *

 

   She was at the airport, clutching the handle of her suitcase tightly in one hand while she waited to board her flight. She’d had a tearful departure from her parents, being smothered by the two before the JYP liaison directed her towards the boarding area to meet the other person selected to train with her. Excitement thrummed in her veins as she waited, overhearing that the other girl ( _another girl_ , she thought, _she hoped they would be friends_ ) was running a little late and had yet to arrive. Not knowing what to do, she fiddled with her phone, smiling at the farewell messages from the friends she was about to leave behind, feeling their love and support and sadness though they were miles apart.

  She wasn’t sure how much time passed when the liaison stood up next to her, drawing her attention away from the screen. He waved to another man semi-jogging towards them with a pink suitcase dragging behind him, followed by a girl about her own age juggling about twelve different items in her hands. _Cute,_ she thought, and as the pair grew closer she realised how pretty the other girl was. Transfixed, she didn’t notice the slow volts of electricity underneath her skin. The two men greeted each other and began exchanging information in Korean, and Sana only knew approximately three sentences in the language at this point so she ignored them in favour of the disheveled girl in front of her. She _was_ cute, perhaps a little taller than herself, and Sana found herself standing up to introduce herself before she realised.

  “Hi, my name is Sana, I hope we can be friends.” She stuck her hand out.

  The other girl jumped like she’d only just noticed her presence, before her face split into a childlike grin. She looked directly into Sana’s eyes, and Sana was too far gone to notice the sparks arcing between them. The other girl dropped everything in her hands on the bench, before thrusting her own hand into Sana’s. Electricity, pure white and hot, coursed through her veins and something like dread settled in her stomach.

  “Nice to meet you, Sana. I’m Hirai Momo.”

* * *

 

   Understandably, Sana didn’t immediately blurt out to the girl (Momo, her name is _Momo_ ) that her name had been engraved on her skin only weeks before. She felt that perhaps that wasn’t the best way to get to know her, and judging from the lack of reaction when Sana introduced herself she guessed that Momo didn’t have her mark yet. So she waited. She went to Korea, and she stayed by Momo’s side as best as she could because everything here was strange and foreign and she couldn’t understand most of what was said to her. But Momo was a little piece of home, as new as she was, so Sana clung to her ( _definitely_ the only reason, she told herself). She trained with Momo, and she lived with Momo and almost every part of her new life had Momo ingrained in it in some shape or form. And she waited. It became increasingly easy to hide the mark on her wrist, another necessary step in her daily routine, her body having numbed itself long ago to the lightning in her bloodstream, and she ignored the dull thudding in her chest whenever Momo’s hand latched onto her wrist to take her somewhere new.

  “Come on Sana, there’s this _really_ good restaurant an Unnie told me about!”

  “I saw this really cute scarf and I want to ask if you’d think it would suit me?”

  “I found a park! Really close by! Come with me?”

  Sana kept waiting, because as long as Momo took her with her she didn’t mind how long it’d take.

   (She thinks she knows why her tattoo’s on her wrist, when she notices how often supple fingers find their way there with ease).

* * *

 

   The years pass and Sana and Momo become Sana, and Momo, and several others. Sana starts to think that maybe she had waited too long with every new face that becomes a permanent fixture in their life, and the way Momo’s face lights up as they do. In particular, the way her face lights up when a timid trainee falls through their door, stumbling through Japanese-accented Korean and looking like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world than here. Momo throws herself at the new girl, tripping over herself in her haste to introduce the two of them whilst she spouts off rapid fire Japanese at the now beaming girl in front of them and turns to Sana with an equally bright grin.

  “Can we keep her? Oh please, she’s so cute! Wait, are you older than me? Oh God I’m so sorry I didn’t mean-”

  Sana smiles at the exchange and how quickly Momo changed her tone, noticing how the new girl had to blink away the whiplash induced by her dorky friend. She learned the girl was called Mina, she was younger than both of them and she was very beautiful, and Momo seemed to be very much infatuated with her.

  It turned out that Mina just wasn’t very difficult to love, as Sana found out when she realised a few months later that she would do just about anything for the younger girl. Sana didn’t realise that since the beginning, Mina had been looking at both her and Momo with knowing, sad eyes.

* * *

 

   Sana woke to see Momo, completely bundled in her duvet and wrapped like the cutest thing she had ever seen, standing in front of her bed at - she squinted blearily at the glaring red letters of her alarm clock - 03:24 am. The sight wasn’t unwelcome, despite being slightly unusual, and there was a mumbled question on the tip of her tongue when a clap of thunder shook the building. Sana felt rather than saw Momo throw herself on her, duvet and all, a startled cry sounding in the room. The mattress dipped under the added weight and Sana felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips.

  “I uh, know that you don't like thunderstorms, so I thought I’d make sure you were okay.” Momo’s voice was soft and almost child-like, and Sana snorted.

  “Oh yeah I’m totally terrified.” Her smile broke into a grin as she wrapped both arms around her little blanket burrito, relishing the squeak it emitted when she gave a little squeeze. “How did you know I needed a big strong protector like yourself to keep me safe?”

  “I always know.” The reply was muffled as Momo started wriggling above her, shimmying out from her own duvet and sliding discretely under Sana’s. Sana felt trembling fingers interlace with her own. “I’m gonna hold your hand for protection, you know?”

  “Okay.” Sana hummed softly, and the room illuminated pure white at another flash of lightning. She held Momo closer to her, tucking her head against her chest to at least try and dampen the imminent thunder that would follow, and when it came the body pressed against her only jumped a _little_ bit. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t looking forward to the next one, if only so Momo would burrow even deeper against her.

  “I never knew you were this scared of thunder. You always used to let me crawl into your bed when we were younger.” Sana said, using the hand that wasn’t clenched in a death grip under the sheets to massage the back of Momo’s head. She inhaled deeply, absently noting that Momo smelled like her favourite conditioner.

  “I always have been, I just felt like I had to protect you, y’know?” The words were muffled against her chest, tinged with the verge of sleep. The hand in her own moved up to stroke her wrist and Sana had to force herself not to jump at the sudden spark that shot up her arm, electric currents running through her veins with every lazy swipe of Momo’s thumb against her skin. “Since when were you not afraid of thunder?”

  Sana smiled against Momo’s hair. She learned not to be afraid of thunder when it echoed inside her chest at every interval between heartbeats, roaring louder every time she looked into sun-kissed brown eyes. It was harsh, cracking booms against her ribs when deft fingers played with her own, and it was soft, low rumbles in her stomach when the breaths skittering across her body evened out as the arm slung across her waist grew lax. She absently wondered when she had learned to live with the noise.

  Another flash of lightning lit up the room but the body against her had already succumbed to sleep. The accompanying thunder was nothing compared to the rolling waves in her chest.

  “When you became the lightning, I suppose.”

 

  The storm had passed hours before she woke up to find Momo’s limbs still entangled with her own, but all she could do was marvel in astonishment at how Momo’s soft snores drowned out the continuous booming in her ears.

* * *

   She makes a silent resolution with herself that no matter what happens, she was keeping Momo in her life at all costs. She’d accepted that at this point she was probably one of the unlucky people whose soulmate wasn’t actually theirs. It hurt, but at least the electric currents in her wrist weren’t as frequent as they used to be, and Momo still tucked Sana against her side like she belonged there.

  (She did).

  Being pressed into Momo made her feel like everything was going to be okay, and she liked resting her head on her chest and letting the steady beats of Momo’s heart drown out the storm in her own. A familiar hand always found its way to her hair, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of her head as fingers moved through the strands.

  “I don’t know why you’re sad, but I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”

  Sana had found it long ago in sunset eyes and and arms like home. She watched it walk away from her again, and again, until home was a distant memory and the sun had set long ago.

* * *

   Sana turns twenty and she realises that it had been almost six years since the fates decided she didn’t deserve her happy ending. She navigates the day with ease, practiced (and genuine) smile in place throughout and she thinks it must be a trick of the light that Momo was looking at her expectantly the entire time. She nervously pulls the sleeve of her shirt down further when nobody looks, and ignores the way Momo’s gaze made the dormant fuses in her veins jolt to life. She laughs with Dahyun, and she runs from Jeongyeon who mischievously chases her with a dab of frosting on her finger, and she finds herself in hers and Momo’s park at 2am with more than a little bit of alcohol flowing through her body.

  They play and they laugh like nothing else matters, going as high as they possibly could on the creaky old swings and catching each other at every almost-stumble and for a while, Sana could almost forget. They don’t quite catch each other one time and they fall, crashing to the ground but she barely felt the impact when strong arms pulled her on top of a soft body instead. She could have fallen asleep right there and then, burrowed deeply against Momo’s side, but then Momo’s gentle voice breaks the haze with easy conversation. Sana replies halfheartedly, barely registering the words coming from her mouth because she was drunk and Momo was warm and she just wanted to close her eyes for a little while - that was, until Momo’s next words doused ice cold water on them both.

  “You mean like soul mates?”

  The current in her wrist surged to life and she pressed further into Momo’s arms, ignoring the tiny voice in her head telling her to confess.

  “Yeah. Like soul mates.”

 

  They walk home together with their hands interlaced like normal, but Sana swears Momo isn’t nearly as warm as she used to be.

* * *

   It was easy, so goddamn _easy_ to go through every day like nothing had changed and like Sana wasn’t in love with her best friend who wasn’t in love with her. She realises that it _must_ have been a trick of the light, the way Momo looked at her on her birthday, because now Momo looks at her with clouded eyes and small, tight smiles. It slowly changes from Sana, and Momo, to Momo and Mina and Jihyo - with no Sana. She’s not sure for the reason behind the subtle change in the dynamic of their relationship, but she finds herself crying at night for the loss of something she never had. Her routine never changes.

  Until.

  She’s in the bathroom applying concealer on her wrist, watching the familiar name fade away with ease when someone bursts in. She’s frozen, looking up to establish eye contact with startled brown eyes that are trained directly on the child-like kanji on her wrist, and she realises these past six years might have all been for nothing. She surges forward, the concealer forgotten as it clatters noisily into the tub, and she’s clutching desperately to Jihyo’s shirt babbling confusing strings of _please don’t say anything_ and _god please don’t tell her_ when she’s pulled into her chest and wrapped tightly in her arms. Jihyo’s soothing voice cuts through her frantic sobs and talks her down from her mania, chanting _it’s okay_ and _I’m here for you_ on a relaxing loop in her ear.

  A few days pass and Sana’s routine doesn’t change. She still wakes up early every morning to hide the shame on her wrist, and she still smiles and performs like everything isn’t dangerously close to falling apart, like _she_ isn’t dangerously close to falling apart. The only thing that changes is the way Jihyo’s doting eyes trace her every step, and how Momo is beginning to look at her like she’s trying to figure something out.

  Sana smiles a little brighter and Momo looks away.

* * *

   Momo corners her one day, intent on not letting her leave until she had answers. The other girls had left to go out for food, Sana having excused herself from the outing with claims of an upset stomach. She had assumed Momo would have gone with them, but she found herself trapped between the kitchen counter and Momo’s body blocking the only exit, arms crossed expectantly. If only she had stayed in her room and didn’t feel the need to raid Nayeon’s secret ice cream stash that they all knew about.

  “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  Momo’s words were blunt, not really one to beat around the bush. Sana fidgeted guiltily.

  “Have I?”

  “Yeah.” Momo eyes stared pointedly into her own. “You have.”

  The moment stretched between them, the silence filled with unsaid words and an unbearable tension. They’d never fought, not in the entire six years they had known each other, and the direction of this conversation was heading in completely new territory for them both.

  “I miss you.”

  Momo’s voice was soft and familiar, childlike tone feeding the growing guilt and shame in Sana’s heart that she’d been treating Momo the way she had been. This was _Momo_ for god's sake, and she turned away so she wouldn’t see the sheen of wetness brimming in her eyes.

  “Sana, talk to me, please.”

  She couldn’t she couldn’t _she couldn’t_ , and she moved to walk past Momo and be anywhere but here drowning in self-remorse and embarrassment.

  “Sana no wait, _please_ don’t go.”

   Slender fingers wrapped around her wrist in a desperate grip, halting her escape and bringing her to an abrupt stop. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around, unwilling to let Momo see the tears threatening to fall, so she waited for the other girls’ next move. She waited, but it didn’t come. Confused, she dried her eyes with her free hand before turning to see Momo staring dazedly at the wrist in her grip, eyes narrowed in confusion. She saw the traces of concealer on Momo’s thumb, and it was only when she looked down did she notice the searing heat where Momo's skin brushed against her own.

  “Why do you have concealer on your wrist?” A confused statement, genuine curiosity in her voice where there had only been desperation before. Her thumb swiped down again, rubbing away the make-up and Sana let her. Confusement turned to astonishment as faded black marks appeared, and the name she had hidden for the past six years revealed itself to two girls connected by the stars.

  The tears she’d tried so hard to keep at bay fell, and she watched Momo read her own name again and again through blurred vision, trying not to jump with every jolt spiking through her veins when Momo traced her handwriting with her fingers. They trembled against her skin, and Momo’s voice shook with the same unstable waver when she tried to speak.

  “I don’t, you have, my _name_ -” Utter disbelief laced her words, unable to form a coherent sentence. And then she laughed.

  It was loud and genuine, a little wet from the tears falling down her face, and it snapped Sana out of her reverie.

  “God I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to burden you like this and just know that this doesn’t have to change anything between us and- why are you smiling?” Sana choked through her tears. She had expected refusal, a gentle letdown and a pat on the back and she’d carry on covering up her mark just like every other day. She didn’t expect Momo to laugh like a weight had been lifted from her lungs, and look at her like she hung the stars in the skies and her eyes.

  “How long?” Momo took Sana’s hand into her own, and Sana jumped when she felt the raw heat emanating from Momo’s fingers in waves.

  “Since I was fourteen.” Sana admitted for the first time in her life, satisfied to see the shock shoot through Momo’s eyes.

  “How did you do that,” Momo whispered, voice soft and fragile, “it damn near killed me and it’s barely been half a year.”

  Sana blinked.

  “Wait, what?”

  Momo laughed again, liquid sunlight intertwining with the lightning thrumming through Sana’s veins, and she let go of her hand. She stepped back and she didn’t hesitate as both her hands lifted the hem of her shirt, throwing the offending piece of clothing over her head and somewhere towards the couch. She smiled at Sana, a blinding force that tugged a smile from the corner of Sana’s lips, and Sana wasn’t going to lie - she was a _little_ confused at where this was going when Momo’s hand stretched out to grab her own. She tugged her towards her, not caring that she was only wearing a baggy pair of sweats and a bra and Sana felt a flush begin to rise on her cheeks when Momo pressed the tips of her fingers into her ribs.

  She felt the intense heat of a raging fire under Momo’s skin and she looked down to see her own name, her _own_ handwriting printed like fresh black ink under her palm. Fire kissed her fingertips as she traced her name slowly, and she felt Momo shudder underneath her with every jolt of electricity passing where their skin touched. She looked up into glistening brown eyes streaked with flashes of lightning, and she hoped they could see the burning embers flaring in her own. The space between them disappeared, neither of them entirely sure which one closed it, and they melted into a swirling inferno of lightning and fire.

   Holy shit, she had a _soulmate._

   She smiled into the kiss, and thought that maybe, _just maybe_ , this was worth the wait.

* * *

 

   “I’m happy for them.” Mina said into her empty cup, fingers drumming mindlessly against the cool ceramic. The others had come home to find the two girls sleeping together on the couch, both of their tattoos displayed for the world to see. “It’s the least they deserve.”

  Jihyo smiled.

  “So am I.” Her fingers reached out to interlace with Mina’s, wishing she could make her feel even a fraction of what she felt. “You deserve to be happy too, you know.”

  Mina exhaled heavily, genuine smile stretching across her stoic features. 

  “I am happy.  _ You _ make me happy, nobody else, and I may not have your name tattooed into my skin but that doesn’t mean I love you any less.” 

  Jihyo smiled at her for real then, and Mina wondered what she had done to deserve her love. She leaned forward into a sweet kiss, trying not to shake when Jihyo's other hand tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, accidentally brushing against faded black letters underneath. The fates may have imprinted bubbly, familiar kanji on her skin, but there was nothing that could stop her from loving the girl in front of her. 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a sequel, of sorts  
> ;)

**Author's Note:**

> @tiffatologist on twt


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